happy hybrid holiday!

this fortnight at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ we are especially excited to have deedee's digis as our lovely new sponsor. not only are they offering a fabulous prize for one lucky random cardmaker who links up with us, they've also created a brand new kit especially for us to use (how cool is that?!) AND they are going to offer that kit absolutely free to our readers during the course of this challenge. awesome or what??! yeah, we thought so too! speaking of the challenge, i bet you've already guessed that the brief is to use a digital element of some sort in your brand new holiday card. it can be a brush, a paper, a digistamp... whatever you like! don't have anything fab? jump over to deedee's digis and grab the very festive free kit, "JINGLE ALL THE WAY!" which looks a bit like this:

want to see my card? (please say yes, or the rest of this post falls kind of flat, lol!) awesome! here it is now:

"jingle all the way" digital kit available *FREE* this fortnight to JINGLE BELLES readers at deedee's digis! i've used the bell image (as a template to paper piece), the "jingle all the way" sentiment and the red grid paper here. other ingredients: core'dinations cardstock, petaloo flowers and leaves, a fabric covered brad of unknown origin, and scraps of red and gold ribbon from my stash.

my favorite thing about digital supplies is how much freedom they offer: you can make the elements any size and scale, print on any type of paper, use a pre-colored image OR go to town with your own markers and pencils... the choices are pretty limitless! then when you add in the fact that they NEVER run out, that's kind of hard to beat, right? for this card (which is 5x6.5") i printed the plaid/grid paper as a 5x7 panel on regular old copier paper and the sentiment as a wallet-sized photo on soft tan cardstock. i formatted the outline of the jingle bell as if it were a 3.5x5" photo and printed it on plain copier paper, too, which i then used as a template to paper piece twice; once on the sand-colored cardstock and once on some super-sparkly gold glitter paper! i used my cropodile and a craft knife to cut out the holes in the bells and backed the interior with scraps of black paper; it's hard to see in the pic, but in real life it adds just that little bit of extra texture. speaking of texture-- which you know i lOOoOoOooove-- i swapped out the printed bow in the image for a "real life" version in red satin, that i embellished with dimensional florals and velvetty leaves. all of the above are popped up on textured red cardstock layered with a scrap of chunky metallic ribbon. will this card fit in a standard envelope? maybe not, but i always have a bunch of gifts to mail at christmas, too, and nothing decorates a plain wrapped package as well as a unique and fabulous card, am i right? ;)

speaking of unique and fabulous, we have another treat in store at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ as *four* of the very talented designers from deedee's digis  have joined us to show off this festive kit! why not hop over and see the lovely work of Tamara, Marji, Donna, Faith, not to mention our own amazing stephanie! and be sure to JINGLE ALL THE WAY, darlings! ♥